GUTS Member run at Tributary trails adjacent to SweetWater State Park. We ran a preview of a new 15K to be held here in Sept.

The trails out here are pretty and I admire the fact that a fellow GUTS member and crew basically created the whole system. The course is very windy and twisty. There are rolling hills and a lot of long slow incline walks. Overall very runnable if you are the type to run hills. We skipped the powerline climbs (yeah!) but took another trail to Top of The World.

We made the awful descent from TOTW down to the river and headed to the right. I *hate* this descent. This is the 4th time I've done it and instead of becoming more comfortable with it, I've become more fearful. Someone is going to break their neck out there and I don't want it to be me. Dropping 300ft in .5 mile is pretty steep and it is made worse by all the loose rocks. There is very little to break your pace (no trees) and even going slowly is tough because there is nothing for your feet to hold on to. I was going turtle pace and still slid a few times. My nerves are just too bad for that descent. I really don't want to do it ever again.

After the insane descent, we headed to the right side of the river. All of the SweetH20 races take you left to the river. Nice running over here and we ended up back on the Tributary trails. We ran through the high grassy fields again towards the powerlines. We hit the gravel road and bore left instead of right which would lead to the powerline climb. Thank goodness! This led us back into the neighborhood.

Overall OK run but good company. I think I simply really hate running at this park. I've had too many negative experiences during races here and those bad feelings seem to linger.

I finished towards the back of the pack as usual. This was great because I found some folks with similar pacing that I can probably hang with for H9 50 which is awesome. A few people got lost. I think I only avoided being lost because I've run out there before and because I stopped and got some help from another runner. Markings were kind of scarce at some points because of permission issues.

I joked about the lack of markings with the run organizer and came to a realization about course markings. People have different "philosophies" if you will. His was to mark only places where you need to turn. I prefer the mark everything approach because I am paranoid. I think marking only the turns can too easily lead to missed turns if you aren't paying attention all the time. If I had been aware of how he was marking though, I wouldn't have been confused. I came to a path with 3 directions to take and according to his marking rules, that meant I was to go straight and not turn. Interesting.

We had a nice picnic after but I couldn't stay long. Had to pick up my kid!